


Intimate Distance

by sin_bin



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Guilt, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, POV Papyrus, Pining, Sad Papyrus, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 16:30:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7230070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sin_bin/pseuds/sin_bin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere along the line, you messed up.<br/>From the very beginning, something’s been seriously wrong with you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intimate Distance

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill of an anonymous request! I'm always taking 'em at lovebones.tumblr.com.

“HM…”  
Your gaze is intense enough to bore two new holes into your brother’s skull, even from the opposite end of the couch.  
“HMMM.”  
His profile is… oddly compelling to look at, really, but it doesn’t seem to offer any answers, no matter how hard you squint and how thoughtfully you stroke your chin. Maybe you need to try another angle.  
“HM.”  
From the front, he’s a bit more obviously bewildered, probably because you’re blocking his view of the TV. Other than that, there are no particular insights to be had there, either. From the back-  
“HM?”  
Wait, what’s that on top of his head? You sit on the backrest to take a closer look.  
“UGH.”  
How did a ketchup stain even get there? Does he sleep with a bottle of the stuff lying next to him on his pillow? …What a frighteningly plausible theory. You rub it off him.  
“HM-HM.”  
Sometimes, turning a visual puzzle upside-down can help you parse it and bring you one step closer to the solution. You lean forward…  
“congrats on being the first skeleton to qualify as an invert-ebrate.”  
You blink. He seems remarkably unfazed by your blatant invasion of his personal space.  
“SOMETHING’S DIFFERENT ABOUT YOU.”

“like what?”  
“THAT’S WHAT I’M TRYING TO FIND OUT, SILLY.”  
You feel like you’ve arrived at a dead end, though. You’ve tackled the problem from all kinds of perspectives, focused your powers of observation on every square inch of his face, and, still, you remain completely befuddled.  
“…DID YOU GET A HAIRCUT?”  
He snorts.  
“yup. you always did have a keen eye for detail, bro.”  
That’s not it, either. You can’t identify a single thing that’s out of place, and yet, your overall impression of your brother has changed dramatically.

In order for this development to have slipped past you unnoticed, it must have happened over the last few days, weeks, months, some subtle transformation of something about him, something about you, something between the two of you, the extent of which hadn’t really struck you until a few days ago. All he did was smile and wink, the same way he always does, lazily, affectionately, eyes half-lidded, cheek slightly squished by the hand propping his head up, and, somehow, all of those details suddenly felt incredibly important, caught your eye and wouldn’t let it go.

He’s started looking like…  
You’ve started looking at him like…

Before you can come to a conclusion, your chest tightens uncomfortably, and you know that you’re only going to feel alright again once you have your brother pressed up against it. You slide off of the backrest, sit behind him and squeeze him tightly, so tightly that you end up lifting him off his seat. He only reacts with a questioning glance, and you’re unspeakably glad about that, because you don’t think you could answer him if he asked you what was wrong.

In the split-second of darkness between various commercials, you catch a glimpse of your reflections on the surface of the television. More than anything, Sans looks soft. It’s surprisingly appealing, especially when contrasted against your own, sharp edges. You complement each other nicely.

To compare them more directly, you bring your faces next to each other, and when your cheek brushes against his, you can’t help pushing closer, an odd tingle in your soul - curiosity, perhaps? - urging you on. He feels soft, too. If you turned your head just the slightest bit…

“papyrus?”  
You snap out of your stupor and pull away immediately, embarrassment rattling your bones.  
“you okay?”  
“OF COURSE!”  
You release him, leaning back and supporting yourself on your knuckles.  
“I WAS JUST…”  
Your mind is racing, searching for explanations, finding none.  
“…YOU KNOW.”  
“right.”  
He slides down until he’s half-lying on the couch, still casually leaning against your chest, looking up at you. You wonder if he can feel your soul twisting and twitching with uncertainty. You wonder if you want him to.

“is there something you wanna tell me?”  
“NOT REALLY…”  
“something you need?”  
“I’M FINE…”  
“hm.”  
He forfeits the losing battle he’d been fighting against gravity, stretching out on the couch with his head in your lap.  
“i’m just asking ‘cause you’ve kinda been… crowding me.”  
Distress slowly builds inside you. You’re not sure why. It’s not like you have anything to hide.  
“usually, that means you’re working up the nerve to talk to me about something.”  
“NOT THIS TIME.”  
He raises an eyebrow, understandably finding your behaviour too suspect to let it go.  
“you sure?”  
“I’M SURE, SANS.”  
You hold eye contact for a few seconds, the intense, invasive kind that makes you feel like your brother is trying to extract your deepest, darkest secrets through your eyesockets, then he gives a little shrug and a sigh of resignation and returns his attention to the TV.

Nothing of interest is shown on it, and it doesn’t take too long for his eyes to fall closed and his breathing to even out. You should move away, really. You have things to do. Things that don’t involve watching Sans sleep like a total creep. However, this could also be seen as an opportunity to figure out what’s going on here, without annoying him, without him even noticing, and you consider that argument strong enough to outweigh the creepy factor for now.

You gently place a hand on his chest to feel his ribs moving with every breath he takes, upwards, backwards, forwards, downwards. It’s strangely enthralling, despite quite possibly being the most mundane thing in the universe, and that’s when you come to a very definite conclusion - He hasn’t changed, after all. You have. It’s just your perception of him that’s been altered.

The next question is… Altered how?

Carefully, slowly, you put your other hand on top of his head and begin petting him. He’s a really heavy sleeper, but, still, after the awkwardness you’ve already had, you don’t want him to wake up to this. The smooth bone feels remarkably nice underneath your palm, and when the corner of his mouth twitches upwards, it sends a genuine tingle of happiness and warmth up your spine, similar to the sensation you get when somebody earnestly praises you, but different, making you feel light, almost floaty. It’s a totally out-of-proportion response to a quirk of your brother’s mouth. You’re feeling much more about him than you used to.

You’re feeling… too much.

What kind of feelings…?

Dread settles into your soul, and it starts pulsating violently, almost like it’s trying to escape your chest. You can’t blame it for not wanting to be around someone who’d even consider doing what you’re about to do.

You cup his face in both of your hands, fighting to keep them steady. There really is something so heart-achingly soft about him. It’s hidden underneath a facade that’s unbothered and untouched by everything, shining through in his best moments, the quiet ones, the intimate ones, when he shows himself to be loving, caring, vulnerable. Your brother is… a good person.

He doesn’t deserve this.

You lean downwards.  
You just want to know how it would feel.  
You just want to know how you feel.

You hesitate, teeth hovering above his, feeling sick at yourself, feeling despicably excited, feeling…

Your brother’s eyes suddenly open. Your breath is still ghosting over his mouth. Two tiny dots of light focus on your face, then vanish entirely.

You can’t move. Instead, you start shaking.

“papyrus.”  
His voice is cold.  
“sit up.”

You don’t just sit up. You finally regain control of your limbs and bolt like you’ve never bolted before, dragging him off the couch and onto the floor in the process. You seriously consider heading out the door and running off to god knows where, but you realise you wouldn’t get far before he’d catch up to you, so you run up the stairs, instead, throwing the door to your room closed behind you and darting underneath the blankets.

Your mind has still barely even registered what just happened. You’re completely curled in on yourself, shivering violently, a bundle of bones and anxiety. There’s a knock on the door.

“papyrus?”  
Oh, god, Sans.  
“are you… are you gonna talk to me?”  
No. Never again.  
“you know there’s nothing actually stopping me from coming in there, right?”  
“GO AWAY!”  
Great, now you’re yelling at him like he’s the one who wronged you. You barely bite back a pathetic whine.  
“come on, bro. i just-”  
“LEAVE!”  
It’s the only thing you can think to say. The words work their way out of your throat like they’re too big for it.  
“i’m not-”  
“LEAVE ME ALONE, SANS!”  
Saying his name is what finally does it. The full implications of what just happened hit you like a bedrock floor after three minutes of free falling. Your feelings turn into a jumbled, unidentifiable, overwhelming mess, and there’s just too much of it to keep inside. Tears start burning hot trails down your cheeks, and you push your face into your pillow, completely losing control of yourself, heaving and convulsing and crying, crying, crying.

The image of the light leaving his eyes burns itself into your skull. The shock of discovering that you could want, could do something so unthinkable bites into your bones. You feel - unlovable, so utterly, repulsive, so thoroughly, idiotic, so completely - like every thought you have turns into something horrible, eating away at you from the inside, and yet you can’t stop, can’t stop spiralling downwards. You just want to burrow even deeper into the ground, you want to scatter yourself across time and space, you want to cry all the magic out of your body and collapse into a pile of dust.

That last point seems to be the most reasonably achievable. You cry for what feels like hours, and you don’t stop for a lack of grief and anger and shame to motivate you, but for a simple lack of water to form any more tears with. Looks like you’re officially… bone-dry. You’ll probably never hear another stupid, inappropriately timed pun again, so you might as well get into the habit of making them to yourself.

God.

You just lie there for a while, formless thoughts buzzing in your head, feeling completely drained of energy and emotion. There’s another knock, and you’re too weak to protest, not to mention too hoarse, so you just keep lying there, indifferent, numb, accepting of the worst. The door opens.  
“papyrus?”  
One last shiver runs through you, constricting your chest with no tears to show for it.  
“bro?”  
His voice is so small. You’re facing away from him, and he puts a hand on the blanket covering your shoulder.

In under five seconds, you come up with a plan for life to go on, after all.  
“I’LL LEAVE.”  
“…what?”  
“I’LL GO. TO WATERFALL, MAYBE. NEW HOME IS OVERPOPULATED, BUT-”  
You get the hiccups, which isn’t exactly surprising, but does kind of undermine the seriousness of the moment.  
“I CAN BE GONE BY TOMORROW, IF YOU WANT. THERE’S… NOTHING HERE FOR ME, ANYWAY.”  
No one. Not a single soul.  
“I’M A GROWN SKELETON. I COULD-”  
Hiccup.  
“I SHOULDN’T BE-”  
Hiccup.  
“YOU CAN’T WANT ME AROUND ANYMORE-”  
A hiccup, and a hideous crack in your already strained voice. You fall silent. Sans doesn’t make a move.

“…why would you think that?”  
You can’t bring yourself to answer him. He knows. He has to know.  
“everything’s better with you around, bro.”  
The bed dips slightly. You feel his spine against your back.  
“you’ve always been… the exact opposite of a burden to me.”  
You don’t deserve his kind words. You don’t even deserve his presence, warm and reassuring, but you bask in it, regardless, as selfish as ever. He sighs.  
“this can’t seriously be about what just happened.”  
His hand is kneading your shoulder.  
“there’s gotta be something else. something really bad.”  
“I THINK-”  
When will these hiccups stop?  
“I THINK 'WHAT JUST HAPPENED’ IS BAD ENOUGH ON ITS OWN, SANS.”

He actually has the nerve to chuckle at that.  
“what, that little moment we had back there?”  
It wasn’t “little”. It was highly significant. To you, at least.  
“i’m gonna go ahead and blame your lack of impulse control for that one. and, uh, you know. you being… curious.”  
Oh, no, he doesn’t get it at all. Even you’ve figured it out by now, and he still thinks you’re just confused.  
“i mean, don’t get me wrong. that was awkward.”  
You’re not sure if you should be frustrated or grateful for his obliviousness.  
“especially the part where you, uh, didn’t ask. kinda upsetting, i admit.”  
God, you’re garbage.  
“but all we’d need to move past that is… i dunno, an apology?”  
You were so invested in being garbage that you didn’t even try to make up for your mistakes.

“I’M SORRY, BROTHER. I KNOW I’M-”  
“shh, shh. that’s enough.”  
He turns around, squeezing himself into your bed.  
“i don’t wanna hear anything else about how terrible you think you are.”  
He wraps his arms around your blanket cocoon. It must feel pretty comfortable to hug.  
“i love you.”  
It sounds genuine, despite everything, and that makes it so much worse, somehow.  
“and i’ll always want you around.”  
Everything is only going to get harder from now on.

—

You don’t know what to do.

Of course, that in and of itself isn’t anything new. The problem is that, usually, the first step towards making it out of whatever predicament you’ve found yourself in would be to ask your brother about it. That’s not really an option, this time.

The alternative would be to do your own research, comb the library and the undernet for answers. You know the former’s inventory well, particularly the books about social practices of some sort, and they don’t even mention anything comparable to your situation.

Looking it up on your shared computer is… risky. Still, you eventually work up the courage, or rather, the desperation to do so, curtains drawn, door locked, a blanket covering both your head and the screen, still feeling dreadfully paranoid the entire time. Your query of “WHAT TO TELL A FRIEND WHO IS NOT ME AND MIGHT WANT TO KISS THEIR BROTHER ON THE MOUTH SOMETIMES” only produces results about monsters who have fallen in love with their significant other’s sibling, which certainly is an unpleasant situation to be in, but not at all comparable to yours. You don’t dare to get any more explicit than that, so you delete your entire browsing history, once, twice, once again for good measure, and leave the PC, feeling as helpless as ever.

—

Sometimes, you have a ridiculous argument, or a quiet TV dinner, or a one-sided snowball fight during which you fail to land a single hit on him, and it feels the same way it always did, familiar, comforting, normal, like you still have a shot at not messing up the most important relationship in your life.

Other times, Sans hugs you, and your hands linger on his back, carefully tracing the ribs you can just barely make out through his jacket, and your thoughts linger on them, too, even long past the awkward seperation. You find yourself wondering what it would’ve been like if his clothes hadn’t been in the way, if you’d gotten to really, intimately touch him, and the images running through your mind catch you completely off-guard, leave you shaking with shame, destroy all the hope you had of ever achieving anything like normalcy again.

Being around him used to be one of the few situations in which you could freely go along with anything your soul urged you to do, with no fear of acting wrongly, of messing up somehow, but those days are over, lost and gone. Your relationship has become unbalanced, and if you want to stop it from falling apart altogether, you’ll have to start paying very, very close attention to every move you make around him.

When you hold him for too long, a look of amused confusion flashes across his face, like he’s wondering what he’s still doing here, like you’re getting something out of the embrace that he’s not, and, no matter how much the lack of reciprocation or understanding stings, there’s some valuable insight to be gained from that. You determine that the perfect brotherly hug lasts no longer than twenty seconds, and you start counting them whenever he moves in to console or congratulate you.

Once you’ve mastered the art of hugging, friendly clap on the back and all, it only becomes less and less satisfying. Maybe it’s because the constant worry about overstepping makes it anything but a relaxing experience, or maybe it’s because you feel like you don’t get back what you put in, like you’re leaving a tiny piece of your soul behind every time you force yourself to pull away, but, regardless, you stop initiating it. It’s fine. You’re an independent skeleton. Not just that, you’re the Great Papyrus. You don’t need hugs to be successful.

More and more often, you lie awake at night, incapacitated by a burning, aching sensation in your chest, clutching your pillow, thinking, fantasizing. You imagine that you’re being held, with no reservations, no anxieties, just love, genuine and deep and all-encompassing. You’re really not sure what that would feel like, but you assume it’d be similar to the way your brother’s hugs felt, back when the need that’s always at the back of your mind didn’t bother you as much. Warm and welcoming, still, but… more intense. Heated. Inviting.

—

“hey, papyrus?”  
You look up, slightly irritated after spending the past half hour attempting to rid the couch of dog hairs.  
“i, uh, got you something.”  
He’s holding… Oh, gosh. He’s holding a miniature replica of a red sports car. The paint is scuffed, and the wheels look a bit loose, but that doesn’t stop your eyes from sparkling - just as much as this thing will, once you’ve fixed it up a bit.

“SANS…”  
“i stubbed my toe on something while i was on my way through the garbage dump, and when i looked down, i saw this.”  
The wet stains coming up to his knees and elbows tell a different story, but you’re not about to press him on it.  
“guess i really stumbled upon it, heh.”  
He holds it out in front of him, and there’s something strangely tense about his body language, eyes cast downwards, head pulled into his hoodie.  
“lucky find. your favourite colour and everything.”

You shuffle towards him, still kneeling on the floor from when you’d been obsessively brushing the couch cushions, and reach out towards it. Your soul is aflutter with light-hearted joy, the kind you only really feel around Sans, and the way your fingers brush against his when you take the car from him really doesn’t help, intensifies it into something deeper than you can accept. You’re getting better at moving past these moments: A deep breath, and you’ve put your soul on emergency lockdown, letting yourself feel nothing much at all.

“THANK YOU SO MUCH, BROTHER.”  
You hug it close to your chest.  
“IT’S PERFECT.”  
He finally lightens up at that. It’s positively adorable.  
“IS THERE SOME OCCASION…?”  
Maybe this is him trying to tell you that he appreciates how you’ve been… restraining yourself. Prioritising his comfort over your “curiosity”.  
“nah. just, you know, coolest bro in the world and all that.”  
“NYEH HEH HEH…”

As soon as you put the car down, he takes a sliding step towards you, right into your personal bubble, never lifting his feet off the floor. His hands are behind his back, and he looks uncharacteristically uneasy, like he’s waiting for something he’s not sure he’ll get.  
“WELL, THIS IS EMBARRASSING, BUT I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING FOR YOU IN RETURN. I DIDN’T KNOW YOU’D-”  
“no, no, that’s fine. i don’t need anything.”  
Despite his words, he keeps glancing at you out of the corner of his eye, more than a little expectantly.

“WELL THEN, DON’T THINK THIS MEANS THAT YOU’RE OFF THE HOOK ON LAUNDRY DAY, SANS!”  
That was a joke, but he doesn’t seem particularly amused. Disappointed, really. He wasn’t actually trying to bribe his way out of his responsibilities, was he?  
“i don’t. just, uh…”  
Eventually, he raises an arm towards you, awkwardly lets it fall back down, and sighs, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.  
“have fun.”  
“I WILL- THANK YOU, REALLY-”  
“yeah.”

He turns around and disappears to god knows where without so much as saying goodbye, taking all of your excitement with him. You’re left kneeling on the carpet, idly running a finger along the car’s hood, wondering if, from now on, every encounter with your brother is going to leave you feeling so confused and guilty.

—

Time passes. Things are fine.

You think about the way Sans’s voice drops to a low, deep rumble when he’s relaxed, about the way his eyes light up whenever you tell him something you’re proud of, about the way he tends to curl in on himself and hug his chest when he falls asleep, and you don’t do anything about any of those things. Your feelings are - unwanted, uncomfortable, unacceptable - not something you can change, and, by themselves, not capable of hurting him. Acting on them is where the real threat comes in, and, as always, you have yourself perfectly under control.

One evening, your brother sits next to you, and you slowly drift towards him, barely even conscious of the movement until your knee touches his and you’re left wondering how, when, why you got so close. You’re about to attempt to discern whether the foundation of your house has slightly tilted towards the left, because that would both serve as a viable explanation and be somewhat concerning, but then he pushes even closer, actually leans against you, and every coherent thought instantly leaves your head.

Your attention is taken up by a pleasant, tingling sensation spreading along your bones, and that’s fine, that’s a completely reasonable reaction. It’s been a while since you’ve come into close contact with anyone, and your magic needs to readjust to being affected by someone else’s. There’s no need for concern. No need to pull away.

Sans looks like he wants to say something, but, instead, he just closes his eyes and sighs, worry apparent in his features. You don’t know what he’s suffering from, and, after growing increasingly distant these past few months, you don’t feel entitled to ask, but the urge to try to make it better is too strong to ignore, so you wordlessly wrap an arm around him and lean your head against his.

For a while, you sit in silence, focused on nothing but the other’s presence, nothing but simply breathing together, and, minute by minute, you feel an enormous, crushing weight that you didn’t even know you were carrying lift from your soul. God, you missed this. You can’t even believe how much you missed this. The tension that keeps your brother’s grin in place seems to be slowly melting away, leaving him looking more tired, more worn-out than you’ve maybe ever seen him.

In your dazed state, your hand ends up on his thigh, because that’s just the most natural place for it to rest, and your thumb ends up gently rubbing across it, once, twice, because you’re pretty sure that would feel good to you, because you’re hoping that it feels good to him, too, because it feels good to do that to someone else. When you look to him, you’re hoping to see pleasure, or at least the same kind of understanding he’d offered you back when all this first started, but instead you get bewilderment, irritation, guilt wedging itself into your chest.

He stares at you like you’re a stranger, someone who just asked him a question in a dialect he doesn’t understand, and pulls his legs together, leaving your hand to drop onto his seat in a clear sign of rejection. It’s fine, somehow, even as you want to cry and scream and punch yourself, it’s all fine. The couch is big enough for the both of you, and the floor is as perfectly straight as ever, and you’re not going to sit this close to him again. This is just another lesson learned.

You can’t trust yourself to behave right. Not ever.

At night, you run your hands over your pillow and imagine that there are bare ribs underneath your fingers, instead, simply because that’s the only kind of anatomy you’re familiar with. Your touches are met with praise and encouragement, with reciprocation, and your soul burns at the thought, so much so that you can’t help clumsily groping yourself in accordance with your fantasy. You grab your spine and push into it, so hard that your fingers slip off and jab your ribs more often than not, and it feels good, regardless, you need that kind of rough touch, so unlike the way your brother would…

You don’t have a stomach, but you can feel it turning, still.

—

You try your best to remain positive. You really, really do. There’s no way this phase, this stupid, unwholesome infatuation of yours, is going to last much longer, and, once it’s over, you’re going to work hard at fixing all of the damage you’ve done to your relationship.

Until then, you put as much energy as you can spare into becoming a better brother than you used to be. Only now, looking back on your past behaviour through a more critical lens, do you realise that you probably consistently made him feel pretty bad about himself, when, underneath your annoyance, you always thought he was pretty great.

You stop scolding him - You no longer feel like you have the right to judge anyone for anything.  
You clean up after him whenever you get the chance - Making sure his living space is comfortable is the absolute least you can do.  
You don’t complain when he spends the night at Grillby’s - It’s no wonder that he needs more and more time away from you.

If there’s ever been a symbolic manifestation of your neverending nitpicking, it’s The Sock in the living room, and, with a heavy heart, you decide that it’s time for that to go, too. You crumple up the post-its stacked on top of it, and when you move to pick it up, making as little contact with it as possible, you notice your brother staring down at you with a look on his face that would best be described as “abject horror”. This must, admittedly, be a rather shocking sight.

“HEY, SANS.”  
You lift the sock, extend your arm to the side, and unceremoniously drop it into the laundry basket.  
“YOU WIN.”  
He doesn’t seem as happy about that as he ought to be. His grip on the railing turns slack.  
“huh.”  
His hands drop to his sides, and he looks away, a strange sort of helplessness on his face.  
“if… if i’d known…”  
You tilt your head to the side, baffled by his reaction.  
“i would’ve done it, if i’d known it really bothered you.”  
The silliest part is that this isn’t even the first time he’s gotten upset over a sock.  
“i wasn’t trying to annoy you. i mean, i was, but not like…”  
“SANS.”  
“not in a way that’d make you give up on… the sock.”  
“SANS. SERIOUSLY.”  
He leans forward, one arm draped over the railing, one holding his face. You smile.  
“IT’S JUST A SOCK.”  
No reaction.  
“I THOUGHT I’D DO YOU A FAVOUR.”  
“…thanks.”  
You turn around to pick up the laundry, and when you turn back towards him, he’s already gone. 

—

The list of activities you share grows shorter and shorter. The distance between you only grows and grows. At random times during the day, a chilling emptiness creeps up on you, reminds you that this is all your fault, reminds you of the warmth you used to hold in your chest and what it’s been twisted into, and you keep smiling through all of it, until those feelings are nothing but background noise, a near-constant mantra at the back of your mind.

Somewhere along the line, you messed up.  
From the very beginning, something’s been seriously wrong with you.

Sans stops kissing you goodnight. You’re too old for that kind of stuff, anyway. Soon after that, he pulls up a chair next to your bed when he reads to you, probably because he noticed how you squirm away from him whenever he sits in it and you desperately, desperately want him to hold you. Eventually, he stops showing up altogether. You spend a whole night waiting for him, but he never comes, and doesn’t so much as comment on it when you see him in the morning. That makes it easier, and, simultaneously, so much worse.

You never talk about anything. You never have a big falling-out. You just slip away from each other, wordlessly, hopelessly, ceaselessly. It’s the absolute last thing you ever thought could happen to you.

All you have left is the fictionalised version of him that you dream up whenever the loneliness becomes unbearable, tender and open and willing and just as disgusting as you are.

Some nights, he simply lies next to you. You wrap your arms around your pillow and imagine you can hear him breathing, imagine you can softly click your teeth against his forehead and his mouth and feel that mutual spark of magic running through your bones, imagine you can keep him close and safe and happy, love and be loved in return.

Some nights- Some nights, frustration builds up inside you, and steady pressure and thoughts of sweet, gentle things aren’t enough to relieve it. Your hands start out softly trailing across your ribs, but end up squeezing and bending them to the point where the ache of it travels through your marrow, making you sweat hot and cold all over. The mix of self-indulgence and self-punishment is oddly satisfying, something to lose yourself in, and you imagine that your hands are replaced by smaller, steadier ones, eager to give you what you need, anything you need.

Tonight, your hand is awkwardly shoved inside your ribcage, drawing meaningless patterns along the inside of your sternum. You’re lying on your side, eyes screwed shut, face buried in your pillow to muffle your heavy breathing, and when you feel its smooth texture against your pelvis, you ride out a violent wave of shame, wrap your thighs around it, and squeeze. You can’t help yourself, you start rocking into it - the soft pillow, your brother’s hand - trying hard to keep your noises breathy, voiceless.

“feel good?”  
There’s no need for him to ask - firstly, because he’s a figment of your imagination, and secondly, because he should be able to tell, from your slow, drawn-out movements, from the desperate hold you have on him, from every sharp breath you draw in - but he would, regardless, he’d want to hear you say it. It’s a dizzying thought - to be wanted, in some capacity.

You turn over, straddling the pillow, and, along with your position, the situation you’re fantasizing about suddenly changes. Your hands are on his chest, and, as they’re roaming across it, he covers them with his own, not to stop them, but to encourage them, moaning long and low. You grind against him, and his mouth opens, and his voice rises in pitch, and, for a moment, you forget yourself, whimpering helplessly.

You let yourself fall forward, bite down on the pillow, and begin rutting against it in earnest, too far gone to care about the soft, repetitive squeaking of your bed. The sensation remains frustratingly dull, and your movements grow desperate as you imagine Sans’s pelvis underneath yours, rough and hard and satisfying. He’s- He’s chanting your name-

“papyrus, papyrus, i love you, i need you…”  
You raise your hips into the air to fumble with your pajama pants, hastily tugging them off, and when you come back down again, you can’t help letting out a genuine moan. The illusion of bone-on-bone contact is broken, but the direct friction causes heat to accumulate in your soul and dissolve into dizzying pleasure. With shaking arms, you push yourself up again, thrusting with as much force as you can manage, just barely swallowing the “oh"s and "ah"s your body is urging you to make, gasping for air.

You’re approaching the edge, finally, yearning for relief. You close your eyes and imagine you’re cupping Sans’s cheek, imagine you’re looking into his eyes as you’re coming together, and grind down hard, trying to maximise the pressure, trying to make it last.

"papyrus…”  
Your imaginary brother’s voice is oddly soft. Pleading, almost. A strange, cold kind of anxiety overcomes you.  
“papyrus…”  
Your real brother is most likely snoring, fast asleep in his room. God, you hope he is. You wouldn’t want him to be exposed to this, not ever.  
“papyrus…”  
You come, covering your mouth, shuddering for more reasons than one.

Suddenly, your imaginary Sans looks much more like the real deal, no longer wearing the face you’d constructed in your mind, contorted with obscene pleasure, no longer sighing and yelping and moaning in the voice you’d put to him, far more expressive than he ever would be.  
“papyrus…”  
You exhale, shakily, digging your fingers into your pillow.  
“what’s wrong with you?”  
You feel clammy.  
“why would you do this to me?”  
You feel dizzy.  
“what did i do to you?”  
You feel sick.

You collapse onto the mattress, staring at the ceiling.

You’re alone.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [All My Fault](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8036020) by [PearlyWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PearlyWrites/pseuds/PearlyWrites)




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